Ha, I agree with you, really. Reality is crufty and getting things done involves compromise. Still, I think there is value in studying other ways of doing thin

Ha, I agree with you, really. Reality is crufty and getting things done involves compromise. Still, I think there is value in studying other ways of doing things. For example, my studies of Plan 9 introduced me to CSP, erlang style concurrency, which is a great way to structure some types of programs. And don't forget that some problems can only be solved by introducing simplicity at some level. For example, google achieved high levels of reliability and scalability by using a simpler computational model: map-reduce.